City Tech Garden Expands Outlook, Attracts Students and Butterflies
By Professor Mark Hellermann
New York City College of Technology
We have been hearing a lot about Brooklyn’s “farm to table” restaurants. Places like Roberta’s, Farm on Adderly and Vinegar Hill House support local farms and grow some of their own produce. According to the group More Gardens, over 75 urban gardens green up the Brooklyn cityscape (www.moregardens.org). Four-star chefs like Tom Colicchio and Jean-George Vongerichton have their own restaurant gardens in that other borough across the river.
At New York City College of Technology (City Tech), the hospitality management program — many of whose graduates go on to hold positions in top restaurants — is giving students an opportunity to experience the “locavore” movement first hand. And get their hands dirty at the same time.
Just a few blocks from City Tech, within the new Dekalb Market, the Hospitality Garden is a small plot of soil that provides fresh, organically grown flowers and vegetables for culinary classes. But it also provides students with an educational extension of the college by teaching them what chard, collard and zucchini plants look like; that pea shoots are edible; and that green beans can also be purple.